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3 Ways To Position Yourself As A Leading Female Voice In The Tech Community

Over the last year, a lot of ideas have emerged from the city of Las Vegas – particularly from our exploding tech startup community.

In 2012, Las Vegas entrepreneurs were featured in dozens of national TV, print and online media (particularly Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, who publicly committed to spending $350 million of his own money to revitalize our downtown) ranging from coverage in TheNew York Timesand TIME Magazine to Inc. and Fast Company.

When I launched my women’s communication and leadership empowerment platform, Step Into Your Moxie, I hungered to capitalize on my 10+ years of experience in the public speaking circuit by helping professional women more effectively communicate their stories, their expertise, and their ideas. In short, I want the women who are busting big moves in Las Vegas — as tech founders and senior executives — to be center stage, and prove to a national audience that Las Vegas is not only a hotbed of startup activity, but a place of strong female voices.

I’d be lying if I said there’s an equal representation of men and women at our #VegasTech events, but our numbers are better than in most other startup communities. And they are improving more and more every day. For example, when I co-organized and co-hosted the sold out TEDxFremontEastWomen this past December with Jessica Tomlinson — Las Vegas’ first TEDxWomen event — we were quickly overwhelmed by submissions from women in the tech sector. In the end, over 50 percent of our speakers were women with ties to the #VegasTech community.

Meanwhile, national professional and networking organizations for women are starting successful local chapters. Rosa Ilinka McGill’s Girls in Tech Las Vegas enjoys 200+ members. Women 2.0 and Girl Geek Dinner are also about to launch local chapters and events.

These results aren’t unique to Vegas — and shouldn’t be. Here are three ways women can better position themselves as thought leaders in their own tech communities:

Create a community of local entrepreneurs. The key to creating a local community with other entrepreneurs — especially other women — lies in spearheading events, not only where women have the opportunity to be organizers, but where they can step up and take the mic. In every entrepreneurial community, the greatest asset in getting our company message and personal story out is each other. At our InNEVate Vegas in January 2013, over a dozen Las Vegas startups demoed their companies at an event held in conjunction with the Consumer Electronic Show (CES). During the event, five local companies pitched their organizations. Two of them — Tracky (a social collaboration and project management tool) and Ticket Cake (an event ticketing and event promotion website) — have women co-founders and senior executives. The host, the InNEVation Center (a co-working space created by Nevada entrepreneur, Rob Roy, as a charitable arm of Switch), has a management team that’s almost 30 percent female.

Make your pitch memorable. Women have a unique opportunity when presenting to reinvent a traditionally masculine model of pitching by incorporating powerful stories, a key feature of women’s communication style. I’ve judged a lot of pitch fests over the years, and one of my favorite questions to ask other audience members is, “Whose pitch do you still remember?” It’s almost always those pitches that incorporated a provocative story.

Spread the word about your startup. One of the quickest ways to stand out in your startup community is to start talking about your business. It’s easy to get myopic and assume everyone in your community is as privy to what is going on in your local tech world as you are. Whether it’s working with your community to establish a Twitter hashtag that you all use (a la #VegasTech), contributing to online and print publications, or simply sharing your insights about your community and why it’s relevant to a larger audience through a blog or e-newsletter, create the buzz yourself (rather than waiting for the buzz to come to you).

Bottom line? If you’re ready to see change, step out from behind that computer screen and pick up a microphone.

Courtesy of YEC

Called a “Moxie Maven” by the White House, Alexia Vernonis a bestselling author, speaker, coach, and trainer. She develops heart-centered, high impact communicators and speakers. She has shared her advice with CNN, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, CBS MoneyWatch, and FOX Business News. Alexia wrote 90 Days, 90 Ways: Onboard Young Professionals to Peak Performance (ASTD Press) and created Moxie Camp.

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